The Republicans say it's irresponsible to be deficits spending to rev up the economy in this way. They would substitute tax cuts that only provide one-third the stimulative value, and which failed to stimulate the economy well before hand.

Is that the path we want to take? Resigning ourself to a mediocre economic situation? Even modest improvements in economic growth will, just a percentage point or two, will allow us to catch up to our potential productivity, to return to full employment, rather than wallow in high unemployment for decades.

You have a choice this November, and every November thereafter: you can vote to continue a mediocre economic situation, and take the economic and fiscal consequences of that, or you can get America back on track, and growing again.

Some people can afford for this country to rest on its laurels, to continue doing things as they have been done. They've already healed their damage from the recent crisis.

Most Americans haven't recovered, and won't recover until somehow, someway, productivity returns, and the slack in the economy is taken up. Some say that this is at the expense of the rich, but the Rich make out just fine when there are plenty of people to pay for their goods and services, to reward their investments.

The current situation is not good enough, and we don't need to be waiting for nature to take its course.

Mr. Daugherty writes; “The Republicans say it’s irresponsible to be deficits spending to rev up the economy in this way. They would substitute tax cuts that only provide one-third the stimulative value, and which failed to stimulate the economy well before hand.”

I looked at your link and the charts were very good. Where we disagree is the method by which we increase our productivity to match our capacity.

While you may disagree that tax cuts stimulate the economy I believe the facts from previous tax cuts prove it. We can agree to disagree on this.

One can continue to take ever more money from the private sector to spend in the public sector to stimulate the private sector, or…one can give the public sector incentives to spend in the private sector and eliminate the middle-man.

It would be difficut to argue that a government bureaucrat would know better how to spend private sector money than the private sector itself. And, I refuse to accept that it is government’s role to force me to spend my money in ways that I wouldn’t spend it myself.

Does government know which employees and products are in demand better than those who employ and produce? That would simply not be logical.

We both agree that there must be a stimulous to ramp up productivity. Your comments indicate you believe government can do a better job with spending our money than the private sector can do with incentives to spend their own money.

By incentives, I am not speaking of just tax cuts. There are many impediments to companies today (both large and small) that prevent or delay their investing capital to increase productivity.

When you consider the possible repercussions of the newly passed health care law and the unknown of the tax increase next January the economy won’t improve. These curcumstances are not taken into account in your post, Stephen Daugherty. Spending is not the only avenue towards growth. Infrastructure spending, certainty of continuing the current tax rates, eliminating the huge tax burden created by the health care law, all are needed to pave the way forward.

Obama and the Democratic Party made a crucial mistake when they crammed their own agenda thru as fast as possible. It was like a kid wolfing down the ice cream as soon as he got it. The lack of focus on the economy was a self-inflicted wound to the foot. The Democratic Party could easily have repaired the economy by now and then could easily continue the next 6 years toward the health care system we all would’ve rallied around. It would have insured the next 100 years in Democratic Party control of our government. Instead, we’re all still limping from the gunshot wound and there is much uncertainty.

“You have a choice this November, and every November thereafter: you can vote to continue a mediocre economic situation, and take the economic and fiscal consequences of that, or you can get America back on track, and growing again.”

Yes indeed. If you vote for the party in power, you will be voting to continue the mediocre situation that they have been creating since 2006 (Democrats control Congress) and 2008 (Democratic president).

IF you want to get back on track, vote the scoundrels out. No more Pelosi & Reid.

Stephen, you make a very good case NOT to support the status quo. Unfortunately for you, the Democrats have been running the show.

“Where we disagree is the method by which we increase our productivity to match our capacity.”

There seems to be some confusion as the problem illustrated by the charts presented in the article posted by Stephen.

It is not productivity or output capacity that is an issue. It is demand! There is not enough aggregate demand to purchase the productive capacity of the economy. Not enough buyers for the goods that we can produce. Businesses are not going to invest in producivity and hire when their goods cannot be sold.

The private sector, principally households but also businesses, acquired too much indebtedness over the past decade (350% of GDP in 2008). Due to wage stagnation, the American consumer had become increasingly dependent upon debt for purchasing power. The bubble asset base supporting that debt crashed in 2008 leaving the private sector underwater. It was the private sector debt implosion that caused this deep recession.

In response to that situation, the private sector is saving and reducing debt not spending and expanding its debt. For the first time in decades, consumer credit is contracting not expanding. It is attempting to repair its balance sheet. That results in a drop in aggregate demand. Hence the dramatic gap between demand and output or productiviy capacity. Hence, unemployment.

In response, the federal government and the Federal Reserve have been attempting to fill the output gap resulting from the drop in demand with stimulus spending and monetary expansion policies. The problem faced by the Fed is that when the economy is attempting to necessarily deleverage from debt, it is not interested in acquiring new debt. Reducing debt reduces the money supply and aggregate demand. The problem faced by the federal government is that continued or even expanded deficit spending to support GDP is politically problemmatic.

Conservative comments like those expressed by C&J, amount to letting Obama twist in the wind with this problem. However, they don’t offer anything constructive. In fact, they ignore the problem.

Royal Flush-
Bush Tax Cuts: Biggest in American History.
Bush Jobs Numbers: Worst in all the time they’ve kept records.

Reagan’s tax cuts: Biggest Before Bush’s. Signed into law 1981. Unemployment under the new tax law reaches 10.8%, stays above 10% for almost a year during one period, doesn’t return to August 1981 levels until May 1984.

There’s a disconnect here between your claims and your facts. The interest rates probably had a bigger influence. But those probably went down slower because he was piling up more debt, making inflation a bigger concern. The economy doesn’t have a magic “Cut taxes to generate growth” button.

As for the other claim, I think the biggest impediment is that people aren’t employed, and don’t have money to buy things. What’s the point of pushing capital into equipment that’s going to produce goods that won’t sell? What’s the point of employing people who will just stand around waiting for customers?

The pernicious nature of our problem is that the troubles of so many American have reflected back on themselves, making everybody poorer together.

So, in essence, people need jobs. But as I said, the economy’s discouraging it. You would say, don’t stimulate, don’t create jobs by deficit spending to kickstart all that, it will cost too much. Well, I would say, we would deficit spend to get your alternative, and we’d get less than a third of our dollar back in stimulus.

And we need to get the economy growing at a substantial rate again. When we soak up that excess capacity, we can talk about austerity and not have it be the economic joke of the century. Right now, though, there’s no economic growth to take that needed out of.

If you compare austerity to starving yourself on a diet, you’re basically trying to starve yourself while you’re already starving.

Our first concern right now should be to stop starving, to get back to a healthy economy. Then we can trim the excess production from government, and soak up our debts with revenues.

When you consider the possible repercussions of the newly passed health care law and the unknown of the tax increase next January the economy won’t improve.

Possible repercussions. The unknown of the tax increase. The Economy won’t improve.

You notice you’re trying to draw a definite conclusion from what you don’t know and can’t guess at?

These curcumstances are not taken into account in your post, Stephen Daugherty. Spending is not the only avenue towards growth. Infrastructure spending, certainty of continuing the current tax rates, eliminating the huge tax burden created by the health care law, all are needed to pave the way forward.

The Democrats were all set to ensure that most of the tax cuts would continue. Any uncertainty about what tax cuts would continue is due to the Republicans holding out for across the board cuts.

Exactly how big is the tax burdn created by the Healthcare law?

And weren’t Democrats doing infrastructure spending already through the stimulus?

Obama and the Democratic Party made a crucial mistake when they crammed their own agenda thru as fast as possible. It was like a kid wolfing down the ice cream as soon as he got it.

Let me get this straight: Democrats get elected in two straight wave elections, and Democrats enacting their legislation in due course is cramming their agenda down people’s throats? Republicans, in the minority, meanwhile force nearly everything to a sixty vote threshold and put tons of secret holds on everything that the majority, the legally elected majority wants. It gets in the way of Wall Street Reform that Americans are crying out for, it gets in the way vastly popular unemployment benefits, knocks down majority supported proposals for healthcare including the public option and the Medicare Buy-in program.

No, it’s Republicans who have been cramming their agenda down everybody else’s throats. It’s only the fact that most people don’t know how deep and far the obstruction goes that is allowing the Republicans to gain ground.

You can’t talk about bipartisanship from a position of supporting what Republicans did to force the Senate into gridlock.

C&J-
420 bills blocked in the Senate, by filibuster or Senator’s holds. 420! Four years of the worst gridlock and obstruction the Senate’s ever seen. And still, you claim that it’s all the Democrat’s fault.

Pelosi and Reid are doing what they were elected to do. Your people are using extraordinary abuses of the legislative rules to block them, then claiming that the fault is all theirs.

You can’t have it both ways. You cannot lionize the Senators blocking hundreds of bills, the vast majority of the Senate’s business, and then blame us for everything that’s failed in the Senate. That’s like pushing somebody into the gutter and then chewing them out for playing in the mud. Own up to what your cynical, hardline, unscrupulous party is doing to this country, before it’s too late.

Stephen Daugherty, you must agree with my next post before I can let you see what’s in it. If you don’t agree I can always pass a few of C&J’s hard earned dollars your way to get your agreement.

If you do not agree they you must be an obstructionist and we cannot move forward. It’s your fault we cannot agree on my next post. I’m ready and willing to write the next post, Stephen Daugherty! It’s for your own good! Why won’t you agree with it? You should be thanking me!

Mr. Daugherty wrote; “I would say, we would deficit spend to get your alternative, and we’d get less than a third of our dollar back in stimulus.”

Obviously you did not read my post carefully. I wrote that we must give business (both large and small) an incentive to hire and produce. I specifically said that the tax code was not the only incentive. Consider the hundreds of business blocking and slowing regulations that exist today. Condiser the cost of doing business when hampered at nearly every step by government red tape. Want to build a factory, it may take years and thousands of dollars to wade thru all the regulations with no certainity of approval at the end of the process. Want to hire new employees? What will it cost me to comply with all the new health care regulations? On top of all that there are thousands of lawyers waiting to pounce at the slightest infraction with law suits that cost huge amounts of money to defend against and even more money to shell out if the suit is lost.

It’s rather like telling your football team to play their very best and win the game while tying one hand behind their back. The coach isn’t wrong, it’s those damn players who can’t win with the “slight” handicap I placed upon them.

Mr. Daugherty also wrote; “Pelosi and Reid are doing what they were elected to do.”

And, their congressional opponents weren’t elected to do what they have done?

Mr. Daugherty, if the OPR (obama, pelosi, reid) gang were elected to do what you propose about taxes, why did congress recess without even a vote on increasing taxes on the wealthy earning over $250K per year? How can one obstruct what doesn’t come to the floor for a vote?

The answer is very simple. The liberal dems who wish to increase taxes on those they deem too wealthy know for certain this is not popular with voters who, in less than a month, will be asked to rehire these big spending Marxist/Lenninist legislators.

We know for certain, as we have heard it from the mouths of OPR that they wish to redestribute wealth. This is not a popular position for working Americans and only appeals to those who wish to live off the labor of others. Classic Marxism and Lenninism.

American’s have smarted up a lot since the last two elections and have come to realize what OPR represent. The “sheeple” are beginning to realize that this trio of traitors are working for the downfall of American capitalism to be replaced with Marxist/Lenninist socialism. Truly, what they advocate is “trickle up poverty”.

>Mr. Daugherty, if the OPR (obama, pelosi, reid) gang were elected to do what you propose about taxes, why did congress recess without even a vote on increasing taxes on the wealthy earning over $250K per year? How can one obstruct what doesn’t come to the floor for a vote?

RF,

It wasn’t this trio who created this tax problem (which is NOT a tax increase, it’s a tax reinstatement), that was the other trio including Cheney/Bush. They are the ones who placed this on a ten year reevaluation. Consider that now it is being reevaluated, and perhaps improved to a leveler field of fairness.

Weary Willie-
Oh, no, it couldn’t be possible that the Republicans would lie about there being a long period of time to actually read the bill. The bill was passed in December from the Senate, and passed in March.

Three months. If you can’t read a bloody bill and all the Amendments in three months, you need to get hooked on phonics. The thing was debated endlessly in Congress, and if all bloody failed, they had their fricking staffers to read the bloody thing.

Hell, if you formatted it like a book, it’d run no more than two-hundred pages. That’s about the size of a small novel.

The Republicans invented every excuse in the book to gum up the works. They’ve filibustered appointees they later vote unanimously for.

The people voted in a majority for the purpose of carrying out major change. Contrary to what Republicans would have us believe, the people of this country still want it.

Royal Flush-

Obviously you did not read my post carefully. I wrote that we must give business (both large and small) an incentive to hire and produce.

Obviously, I did not agree with you as carefully and exactly as you wished I would. ;-)

Consider the hundreds of business blocking and slowing regulations that exist today. Condiser[sic] the cost of doing business when hampered at nearly every step by government red tape.

Oh, right. Do you have any evidence that your standard bogeyman is actually at play in this situation?

The Blue Danube is getting a red flood of alkaline toxic waste down it courtesy of an aluminum smelting plant. Today’s gulf coast is still recovering and may spend decades recovering from that disastrous oil spill.

And we still are dealing with the Mess on Wall Street from the Derivatives market. Have you consider that the private sector is fully able to **** itself up with needless red-tape, bureaucracy and excessive complexity?

You’ve been riding this hobbyhorse for years, and your people have had all the opportunity in the world to cut regulations, to let polluters and speculators and oligarchs get their way. For all you protest about the red tape and everything, we’re starting out from the consequences of your successes.

Fact is, the markets didn’t just tripped over their own feet and eat turf, they rolled down the hill and off the cliff. The most pernicious, most harmful complexity out there is not the red tape of the government, but the derivatives of the big banks.

Folks say too big to fail, but the reason they were too big to fail is that you couldn’t let one go bankrupt without the derivatives obligations causing them all to go bankrupt.

So, please, continue to tell me that the worst problem that businesses face is the fact that they’re required to comply with federal regulations. Businesses dealt with worse in the 90’s, yet prospered better. as for lawsuits?

American businesses file four times as many lawsuits as do individuals represented by trial attorneys, and they are penalized by judges much more often for pursuing frivolous litigation, according to a report issued today by Public Citizen.

Look up the term “Patent Troll”. Most lawsuit “reform” is focused on denying the average person damages or the the ability to sue somebody who has wronged them. Unsurprisingly, its the people who are held accountable by such lawsuits that favor this, even as their behavior crosses obvious bounds of right and wrong.

And, their congressional opponents weren’t elected to do what they have done?

How about voting against it? See, it may still become law, but that’s what’s supposed to happen with a majority. Republicans risk having the Democrats come back, if they get a majority, and obstructing them so they look like do-nothings.

And of course, what does get passed will increasingly exclude Republicans, as they repeatedly demonstrate that they have no intent to negotiate in good faith.

Mr. Daugherty, if the OPR (obama, pelosi, reid)

Jesus give me strength. Another nickname?

gang were elected to do what you propose about taxes, why did congress recess without even a vote on increasing taxes on the wealthy earning over $250K per year? How can one obstruct what doesn’t come to the floor for a vote?

Your folks promised to filibuster it, as did two or three Democrats. It might have passed on a majority vote, but it was your party that both decided that the Tax cuts would expire this year, and that you wouldn’t allow them to be renewed without the tax cuts for the rich, $680 Billion worth added on.

We know for certain, as we have heard it from the mouths of OPR that they wish to redestribute wealth. This is not a popular position for working Americans and only appeals to those who wish to live off the labor of others. Classic Marxism and Lenninism[sic].

Letting the Tax cuts expire for the rich is a popular position. Does that make the majority of Americans communist?

Aren’t you obviously redistributing income yourself by weighting the tax cuts so heavily towards the rich?

Let’s ratchet down the red-baiting caustic flood of bull**** that is your argument here.

I’m a capitalist. But I’m not the kind of Ayn Rand Objectivist Capitalist you seem to be, sacrificing everybody else’s interests for the rich, and anybody competitive enough to claw out success from that dysfunctional system.

I’m old fashion. I think we should have a good, honest system where fraud and deception are discouraged, where laws ensure that people know the real health of the businesses they invest in. I believe in firm regulation, but as simple as it can be gotten and enforced elegantly.

In short, I don’t conform to your bull**** fantasies about what Liberals these days are. I don’t hate competition and people having to strive to succeed. I just hate stupidity and corruption.

Your self-policing model has a p***-poor track record. Whatever you’ve fought to deregulate or keep deregulated seems to crash and burn, given long enough, with the causes directly relating to the problems you said were harmless, or cared for by the system.

It’s Republicans themselves than engineered the downfall of their brand of capitalism, by making it dependent on naive principles of libertarianism.

What it should be replaced by is not socialism or communism, but a kind of capitalism that actually works. Republicans like to believe that they are the purest of capitalists, when in reality, they’re the most incompetent.

Really dude…fighting for increasing taxes on the wealthy, if as popular as you and Mr. Daugherty seem to contend, would have endeared them to the voters even if they were frustated in the attempt…don’t you think?

If one is honest and knows anything about politics it is clear that the dems didn’t have the votes to pass any new tax bill and they knew such action would make the voters back home even more angry.

Mr. Daugherty is lost in a loop when all he can recognize as business are big banks, the oil companies and wall street bankers.

It is foolish to believe that small business is not the largest employer in the country and the one’s most affected by unending government red tape, regulations, and the new health care bill.

I own a business Mr. Daugherty and have many business friends. We all know the crushing load put upon us by government in the form of reporting, regulations, taxes and such.

Here is the latest poll from CBS showing just how far and fast the obama has fallen with his Marxist/Lennist policies.

“The new poll finds just 38 percent now approve of his handling of the economy, a new low in Times or CBS News polls.”

In the same poll in January 2009, 70% of Americans thought obama would be a very good or good president. It simply verifies what I said earlier…the “sheeple” have awakened and want this bum and the OPR triumverate bounced out of office and, if it was legal, tarred and feathered.

The only real incentive for businesses to expand is the prospect that they will have a positive return on their investment. That there is a market for their products.

The chart provided in the link to this article clearly demonstrates that the problem is a serious drop in demand. Consumers are saving, not buying. It is not for lack of productive capacity. The idea that businesses are not investing in new capacity due to fear of taxes or regulations is a red herring.

What do you propose should be done about the demand gap?
Posted by: Rich at October 7, 2010

Very good question Rich. I, along with millions of other middle class Americans are in fact saving our money rather than spending it on unnecessary consumer goods. So, I will tell you what will encourage me to begin spending disposable income again. In doing so, I can avoid all the naysayers and liberals who disagree. How can anyone disagree with what I decide to do for myself? Or, have we already gone beyond that freedom?

When our federal government proves to me that they can go on a diet and reduce needless spending on pork and excessive government employee payrole and benefits. When government proves to me that they will reduce the regulations and red tape that prevents small business from expanding. When I no longer fear that the stimulous spending will never stop. When I….(I will provide more examples if you wish)

With well over $1 trillion already spent to stimulate the economy, and no appreciable drop in unemployment or increase in manufacturing why am I to believe that more deficit stimulous spending will work any better.

Let’s suppose the OPR (obama, pelosi, reid) triumverate and their supporters are able to pass another $1 trillion in spending. Is there any guarantee it will work better than the last trillion? Will they come back in a year or so and say we need another trillion to stimulate what failed to be stimulated the first two times?

You see Rich, I have no confidence in deficit spending to stimulate the economy. Why should I? Our situation is not even similar to the years immediately following WWII when it did work, and worked very well.

When government demonstrates the same restraint as me and others when it comes to spending I will again have some confidence to spend my own money rather than to have government spend it for me.

Surely you understand, that all this spending has consequences…not today, but someday soon. How much will come from my hide to pay for all the spending that has already occured. I need to save my money because I don’t know the answer to that.

Today, OPR tell us that they will only increase taxes on those wealthy making more than $250K per year. That is an entirely arbitrary amount. Who decided it should be $250K and not $200K? Some bureaucrat…that’s who. What is to prevent them from reducing the amount of what is considered wealthy? In five years they could determine that those making $150K per year are to wealthy and deserve to have some taken from them. Five years later it may be $100K.

Do you understand my concern? I own a business and would love to hire more people to help my business expand. I can’t hire more folks as I have no idea what my costs will be for that hire. Not every small business produces a manufactured product. Many of us sell a service.

Let’s suppose I own a pool cleaning service. Those who own pools may very easily decide to clean their pool themselves rather than spend money for my business to do the cleaning. It’s much the same for many service oriented businesses. Only when those earners, who have pools, feel their job is secure, will they again use my services. For my business to thrive, I don’t need a stimulous to create more homes with pools, I need those who currently work and have a pool feel confident that what they currently have…namely a job and assets, won’t be eliminated or reduced.

The way to stimulate the economy is to make business, and employees, feel secure. And government can do that without spending more money, but rather, by reducing spending and sending signals that they won’t increase my costs, taxes and regulations.

Increasing demand Rich does not have to come from government spending. Demand can come from those of us who are working and earning when we feel secure in spending more of our disposable income. Get that resolved and the spending will begin and along with it, more jobs and more prosperity for all.

You see Rich, I am opposed to government spending ever more of my money to prop up someone else. What happens when my money is gone??? What I fear is “tricke up poverty”.

Really dude…fighting for increasing taxes on the wealthy, if as popular as you and Mr. Daugherty seem to contend, would have endeared them to the voters even if they were frustated in the attempt…don’t you think?

Well, brace yourself: you’re saying the same thing the folks of the Great Orange Satan Daily Kos said.

Unfortunately, Republican nonsense has an excessive influence on some of them. The same nonsense that has them oppose a popular Public Option, a popular Medicare Buy In.

You would say that opposing such things would make them popular. Well, That would make Lieberman popular, right? Not really.

It didn’t help Blanche Lincoln to take the positions she did. Democrats who alienate the base don’t get support from the Republicans, who just field Republicans to take their place.

So you tell me, really, how do Democrats make themselves more popular by doing things your way? Your extremism makes it more difficult for both them and you to position yourself to retake the center. You’re left hanging onto it by your fingernails as the polls gradually slip away from you.

I’m not going to argue that what the Democrats are doing makes much sense. In fact, I argued quite the opposite myself to my fellow Kossacks. The ones that are too worried about you to press advantages or take the populist route? Well, I think they’re kind of expendable.

As for the policy itself, no matter how popular you try and make it, it’s eventually going to be over eight-hundred billion dollars more expensive, and four trillion dollars more expensive in terms of the national debt than doing nothing.

You just have to wonder. If the deficits are really what you fear, you’re turbocharging them right now with what you’re asking for, without much in the way of substantive cuts in your plan to pay for it, and given what your Pledge to America says, there isn’t enough money, given what you put off limits, to actually make up the difference.

Doesn’t matter how you manipulate the polls through your demagoguery. You’ve got nothing to pay for these with.

I own a business Mr. Daugherty and have many business friends. We all know the crushing load put upon us by government in the form of reporting, regulations, taxes and such.

More crushing than the massive shortfall of demand that’s sunk businesses across the country?

Your laissez faire economics have been put to the test, and have turned out to be no easier, in fact harder on the economy than the mythical crushing bureaucracy that didn’t seem to be a problem for generations worth of American entreprenuers.

It simply verifies what I said earlier…the “sheeple” have awakened and want this bum and the OPR triumverate bounced out of office and, if it was legal, tarred and feathered.

Wake up. Obama’s been waiting for you folks to become old news and bad news. Now he’s back in campaign mode, and its pushing the polls back up. The base is cheering about Elizabeth Warren, about the recent electronic notarizing veto, and unlike in 1994, knows it’s in for a bruising fight.

However, I think that you are wrong that the stimulus has not had any positive effect. Most economists agree that TARP stabilized the financial markets and and the stimulus, halted the net loss of jobs and returned the economy to positive GDP growth (although lower than necessary to return employment to acceptable levels). The bleeding in 2008 was enormous. The bleeding has stopped but the patient is only stable and prognosis is guarded. Conservative economists question whether the gains for the economy are short term at the expense of long term economic health. Liberal economists argue that without the stimulus there will be no long term economy to worry about. The Fed and the Obama administration has taken a somewhat middle of the road position: fiscal and monetary stimulus is needed in the immediate future due to the economic circumstances but that fiscal discipline needs to be restored at some time in the intermediate future to protect long term economic interests. It is an entirely pragmatic position in my humble opinion.

You argue that demand can be increased in the private sector by making people and businesses feel more secure. You argue that that feeling of security can be achieved by assurances that taxes won’t be raised, regulations won’t be increased and government spending decreased. What you ignore in your arguments is that the private sector is in no position to go on a spending spree regardless of such assurances. It is in debt. The asset bubble supporting all that debt burst. The middle class of this country has been in wage stagnation for decades. Its spending power has been supported only by increasing debt. Its tapped out. It must adjust its debt servicing requirements to its income. Its source of income from manufacturing jobs and the service industry have increasingly been outsourced and jeopardized.

In my opinion, we have been in an economic war for some time and simply have not realized it or faced it. We have gone for the greatest creditor nation to the greatest debtor nation. Our balance of trade is abysmal. Job creation has been enemic for over a decade. Simply put, we are losing. While we have been fighting endless wars, other nations (China, India, etc.) have been using their resources to improve their infrastructure, educational systems and competitive trade positions. It seems time for both parties to pull their heads out of the sand and begin to focus on the structural problems of our economy.

When our federal government proves to me that they can go on a diet and reduce needless spending on pork and excessive government employee payrole and benefits.

Needless? Every dollar counts. Sure we want more productive and useful projects, but even wasteful projects will push more money into the economy, and that will enable people to buy things.

We take your advice, and the economy gets worse, because what your newly deprived government workers don’t and can’t buy, and what their benefits don’t pay for, won’t pass on money to the businesses in question. The Federal employees, who you single out for ideological reasons, are none the less just like other people who pay taxes, who pay for groceries and other products, who consume healthcare and spend money on vacations.

You would do away with all that spending they’re able to do.

Or, put another way, you would reduce the demand they contribute.

Our problem is that there’s not enough demand out there to fuel the production lines. And that’s not motivated by any resentment or uncertainty about government spending. That’s motivated by the fact people don’t have jobs, are forced to work fewer hours at lower pay, have seen their investments go down, the value of their homes plummet, the cost of their credit go up, and the availability of that credit go down.

You blame government for reduced demand because you must blame government for everything.

With well over $1 trillion already spent to stimulate the economy, and no appreciable drop in unemployment or increase in manufacturing why am I to believe that more deficit stimulous spending will work any better.

Millions more people have jobs than had them last year.

As for productivity? These were the numbers for 2009:, quarter by quarter: 1st: 3.4% 2nd: 8.4% 3rd: 7.0% 4th: 6.0%

Are you going to tell me that these productivity increases, which followed a year that had three quarters worth of negative productivity growth, are not the increase you’re talking about? They’re opening up new car plants, a year after Obama bailed out the big three.

I mean, the way you’re talking, it’s as if the recession and everything’s all in our heads, all just a matter of being discouraged by big government.

No I don’t think demand is low because people are afraid of government, I think it’s because they don’t have money in their hands to spend. You can’t force austerity on people and expect the austere to pay for your economic recovery, anymore than you can pick the apples off a tree and make apple juice from the wood.

Federal employees don’t make more because they get paid more, they make more because non-government workers are now getting paid less. Federal workers are not the problem with our economy, and they are not the reason for the debt.

I have been contributing to the problem. Since the meltdown I have been feverishly paying down my debt, and switching to a cash only program. Now I will admit that feverishly on my budget means trickles and dabs, but most of my disposable has gone to that end rather than purchases. Yes, I’ve done that out of fear, a fear that worse was to come. Intellectually, I’ve known that bottom up spending is the only cure for the mess finance houses left us in, but in real life, I did not see a clear way to continue spending and be able to handle the future as well. I’m sure there are many others in my shoes, and it may be a while for us to get back into the groove. I thank government every day for helping to take the onus off my shoulders while I get back to normal, and can join the land of the living once again. I’ve learned my lesson about personal debt, and will never again chance falling into that gutter.

If there are, as I suspect, many millions in the same boat as me, it will not be much longer and we will start spending again, and the government will be able to relax a little. I don’t see a time in the future when personal debt will reach the heights that it ultimately reached, so some changes and adjustments will have to be made in our economy to fill that gap, I believe it will happen, but, it will happen only if liberals remain in the driver seat. Conservatives will send us spiraling right back into the muck they dropped us into before.

Federal employees don’t make more because they get paid more, they make more because non-government workers are now getting paid less. Federal workers are not the problem with our economy, and they are not the reason for the debt.

Posted by: Marysdude at October 7, 2010

Very interesting comment dude. Of course it’s boneheaded, much like other liberal contentions that we aren’t spending too much, we just aren’t taxing enough.

The continually rising pay and benefits of the federal workforce, despite the non-rising COLA which determines the increase for SS beneficiarys and other entitlements, is directly porportional to the amount of money their union gives to liberal politicans to keep them in office.

GM, better known as Government Motors has accomplished something unimaginable when privately owned. Now that the feds own GM, the unions are coming to heel and accepting lower wages. Gosh…isn’t government ownership wonderful?

I am certain that the libersocialists are clamoring to see their employer also become owned by the Feds so they too can take a pay cut. Just more “trickle up poverty”. SUCKERS

G.M.’s Wage-Cutting Deal Clears Way for a Small Car

“The union has made it very clear they are willing to sacrifice to ensure recovery,” Professor Shaiken said. “But they want to share in the gains of that recovery.”

November voters will remember that the unemployment rate was 7.6 percent when Mr. Obama took office. And the Congress has been in Democratic control since January of 2007.

Virtually every single piece of major legislation Democrat leaders in Washington have proposed over the past 19 months has made it either harder for businesses to hire new workers or retain the workers they already have. And now they want to make it even worse with more regulation and spending.

David Plouffe, who managed President Obama’s 2008 campaign and remains a top political adviser told reporters on Thursday that “his party’s candidates should confront anger about the economic crisis head on — and then blame Republicans.”

Yup, that sounds about right. Tell voters they shouldn’t be angry with their failures and ask to be rehired to simply do more of the same.

What entrepreneurs, investors and executives await is policy stability and predictability, not more government spending, borrowing, sweeping new regulations, and heightened uncertainty.

Our crying need at present is for a robust revival of private long-term investment. Consumption-oriented government “stimulus” programs, threats of tax increases for entrepreneurs and business owners, and costly regulatory onslaughts breed fear and uncertainty and thus ensure a protracted period of economic stagnation.

Robert Higgs is senior fellow in political economy at the Independent Institute and editor of The Independent Review. He is also a columnist for LewRockwell.com. and the author of Against Leviathan : Government Power and a Free SocietyPosted by: Weary Willie at October 8, 2010 10:11 PM

On Wednesday, America’s Nightly Scoreboard’s David Asman hosted Congressman Ron Paul and Judge Andrew Napolitano in a discussion about the Federal Reserve, government spending, and Keynesian economic policies.

Cause a financial meltdown, make billions on the fear, bailout those responsible with taxpayer dollars, spend a few trillion on a stimulous at taxpayer expense, and start all over again.

The center of this problem, what made banks too big to fail, was the Over the Counter Derivatives. Unregulated, these poorly reported instruments were essentially used to hedge and rehedge a market to such a degree that the normal market mechanisms of self-correction not only didn’t work, but couldn’t. Without these derivatives, the lenders could not have paid for so many houses to be built and sold to customers. The market would have naturally corrected the imbalance. The market would have corrected for the riskiness of the loans, as investors noticed the mortgage securities getting riskier and riskier.

The system, as conservatives of both parties had configured it for decades, as the Republicans had succeed in legislating it, created the crisis. You can say, oh, the Democrats encouraged more subprime lending. True, but the Republicans lead the way in legislating away the ability of the federal government to require transparency, openness, and honesty in those markets, which all would have acted as checks on the excesses of the industry.

The banks didn’t invest so much in subprime mortgages because the government was forcing them to, they did it because they could make money hand over fist doing it.

Oh, and you can talk about General Motors, you can talk about what a bad idea that was, but here, if nowhere else in the TARP program, the program did what it was supposed to do. We saved millions of jobs, jobs of people who will not have to go on public assistance, who will not see their parts businesses fold up in the collapse of a national industry, who will not see dealerships across the nation wiped out, with all their staff.

That’s the thing, really. We take necessary action, and your folks sit on the sidelines talking about how we’re failing. Well, have you noticed something? Only as the stimulus is coming to an end, are the tougher times beginning to come back. I wonder, how long the Republicans will last if they take their gains this next year, and start pushing their old BS again.

You can talk and talk and talk about how much better for the economy your policies are, but when your policies were the policies of the White House, and your tax-cut reliant policies were what were in action, our economy was heading on a steep nose-dive. When Obama got into power, lo and behold, the economy started turning around. And as much as you complain about government jobs taking up so much money, did you know that private sector jobs grew, while government jobs shrank? No, no, I didn’t think so.

The fact of the matter is, your policies failed, but your party is too stubbornly ideological, too invested in the destruction and defeat of my party to admit that. And because of that, your party will remain a danger to the economy every time it gets back into power.

Weary Willie-
Republicans won’t cut spending worth a damn. They’ll hinder and undermine Obama’s execution of the laws that are on the books, including the healthcare law. That will create true uncertainty, as opposed to mere conservative hand-wringing. The Republicans will end up forcing this government to borrow more, if their policies come to pass. This is simply a fact, and nothing they would do to cut things would likely change the situation.

The fact is, private long-term investment is most crippled by long term economic woes for the consumer, and for the businesses that depend on them. What point is there to feeding investment dollars into business that right now cannot get enough customers or charge low enough prices to do business at full potential?

Your side is drowning in its own opinions, but nothing it really suggests will make things any better, because they don’t fundamentally understand how they ****ed things up with their earlier policies. They’re treating this economy like the economy of thirty years ago, despite the fact that the conditions are nearly polar opposite to what they were before.

You can’t effectively solve a problem you won’t allow yourself to recognize.

“Only as the stimulus is coming to an end, are the tougher times beginning to come back.”

“And as much as you complain about government jobs taking up so much money, did you know that private sector jobs grew, while government jobs shrank?”

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at October 9, 2010

I am still laughing at the first quote. Here’s your quote summed up…When government stops stimulus spending, the stimulus stops working. Well…DUH…what a great logical statement. Let me extend your logic Mr. Daugherty. Only with continued government stimulus spending will we have the continued effects of government stimulus spending. Those effects? Nothing of merit…unemployment continuing to rise, debt rising at much higher than historical rate, tax increases being comtemplated, and business continuing to swoon.

As for government jobs shrinking I can only imagine it may be true because of the temporary census jobs that were, by design, to end. But, I am not surprised that you fail to indicate that in your “jobs” report.

It gets better. Under Bush, we lost almost eight million jobs. Even with recent job losses, Obama probably hasn’t even broke two or three hundred thousand.

Did things just magically improve?

No. We passed a massive stimulus, and pushed cash into the economy, two thirds of it in efficient infrastructure and economic aid, and one third of it targeted towards less efficient but better targeted tax cuts for the Middle Class and businesses.

But you know, we’re still deep hole because your economic policies were that damaging to the economy.

Worse, the states are cutting programs, making people poorer, and raising taxes and fees to balance their budgets, making people poorer.

You’re so wrapped up in these notions of government spending being bad that you don’t see that it’s part of our economic inputs and outputs, a part of our nation’s economic circulation. Government jobs are jobs just like any others. You’d say wealth is redistributed by taxes in order to make those jobs, but the same is true of regular jobs. It’s just different people redistributing wealth.

But it’s still money that people can spend, that people can use to buy things, and buy services. Those people, mostly in private business, profit no less from the wages of a government worker than from private wages.

What you suggest is increasing unemployment and decreasing the circulation of wealth among American workers. Given the fact that the country is already cash-starved, this is the wrong thing to do.

But hey, we have to run things the way the extremist right wing wants it to be run, so no aid to states, and the Republicans are slashing things left and right to resolve budget problems. Only, things get worse in the economies as these things go on, so the pain only gets worse for the fiscal soundness of the country.

As long as this economy is not up and running at optimum, it is incredibly difficult to reconcile budgets. People are depending on government assistance more, they’re getting retired earlier, they’re not paying taxes in the system, and businesses don’t have as much to contribute to tax dollars either. I know the mention of taxes makes you rush off to some fantasy land where we can balance budgets and cut taxes at the same time, but the reality is, your party is politically unwilling to make the kind of cuts that they’d have to do to reconcile things.

You’re doing things the hard way, the most difficult way, the most inefficient way. Your policies, once again, are constricting the economy.

So you can laugh about how the end of the stimulus means the economy got less buoying it up, but we have quite a lot of evidence it worked, and Republicans look read to make sure that people get quite a lot of evidence that your policies are economic poison.

Where can I find the unemployment rate for previous years?
The annual average unemployment rate for 1948 to the present is displayed below.

Other major labor force series are shown as annual averages on the page ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat1.txt or as a pdf file at www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat1.pdf.

Annual averages, and data from past months, can also be retrieved easily for any series in the monthly Employment Situation news release by using the menus displayed at www.bls.gov/cps/cpsatabs.htm. Please note that annual averages are only available for unadjusted (not seasonally adjusted) data.

Look, jobs may have remained plentiful (As long as we’re counting part-time and jobs and underemployment), but that high employment didn’t have a stable economic basis. The growth was all housing sector and finance sector. When they collapsed, the jobs based on that false productivity went with them.

You would like the rest of our readers to simply assume that because The unemployment rate and numbers didn’t get as high under Bush as they’ve gotten over Obama, that somehow he’s at fault.

I would tell them, then, that to fairly place blame on Obama, we have to acknowledge that policies are what’s important here, not some coincidence of timing.

It’s good that you bring the Bureau of Labor Statistics up, because it’s an excellent source of such information.

I can bring up, for example that the worst month for Reagan’s unemployment numbers was July of 1982. We lost 343,000 from the payrolls then. For Carter, May, not April of 1980 was the cruelest month, with 431,000 jobs lost.

Obama would come into power with the 779,000 jobs lost in January of 2009. This, after a year where not one month had a net gain in payrolls. The crash occured in September of 2008. Not even the terrible recession of 1974-1975 reached those depths. To find a bigger drop in employment numbers, you have to look back to the days following WWII, when the army demobilized, and took the factory production jobs with it. That recession there, which took over 12 points off the GDP is not considered to be particularly bad because the economy wasn’t adversely impacted by it, so when making the comparison, the only numbers that show worse job losses are those from the Great Depression.

There, I said it!

But it’s a fact, so I might as well say it to our readers here: that Obama came into office with raging recession (itself the worst since the Great Depression) incipient deflation (several months would see negative growth in inflation) and a jobs market that was losing hundreds of thousands of jobs off the payroll when he got into office, more than at any time since we demobilized from WWII or climbed our way out of the Great Depression.

Those were the conditions he had to start with. What did you expect him to do, wave a magic wand and halt the recession and job losses right there? These kinds of crashes, especially deflationary ones, have a life of their own. These aren’t business cycles that lay down and die if you just let the economy alone.

Obama stared down the worst economic monster unleashed on this nation, and turned deflation, recession, and unemployment figures around, and did it faster than Reagan did. And the BLS’s figures will actually show you that. They will show you the depth and breadth of the challenges he faced, and the success he’s had in at least healing the country part way.

So, what are your plans? Revive kind of economic hijinks that got us in this position in the first place? I guess if the Great Depression didn’t teach the GOP a lesson, the Great Recession isn’t going to teach them one either. It’s a pity.

Mr. Daugherty writes; “You would like the rest of our readers to simply assume that because The unemployment rate and numbers didn’t get as high under Bush as they’ve gotten over Obama, that somehow he’s at fault.

I would tell them, then, that to fairly place blame on Obama, we have to acknowledge that policies are what’s important here, not some coincidence of timing.”

Good Lord man…even given facts with which you agree your comments do nothing but apologize for bama. I could sum up your entire post with just two words…”Blame Bush”. November voters have a different mantra…

Royal Flush-
If voters have a different opinion, so be it. I formed my opinion based on the facts and figures I have seen, so I don’t need to stick my finger in the wind to know who I should hold responsible, and whose policies would be a mistake to revive or continue.

I will blame Bush for policies Bush helped author. I will blame Republicans for policies they helped push, for paradigms of legislation that they helped make popular. I will accept the fact that many Democrats supported these mistaken measures, but that does not mean I will overlook for whom exactly these measures represented gospel truth.

You can run around, trying to perjoratively push me out of holding Bush and the Republicans accountable for what they did, but I will insist that we have this conversation based on the evidence, and not on your emotional reaction to people not letting your folks off easily.

And when I defend my folks, when I feel they’re worth defending, I will defend them based on facts, not merely what I feel.

Mr. Daugherty wrote; “I will insist that we have this conversation based on the evidence, and not on your emotional reaction to people not letting your folks off easily.”

OH…really, evidence. Well I presented the evidence and you respond with the emotional reaction of who’s really to blame. C’mon Mr. Daugherty, your comments above were just based upon your view while I presented evidence.

Obama would come into power with the 779,000 jobs lost in January of 2009. This, after a year where not one month had a net gain in payrolls. The crash occured in September of 2008. Not even the terrible recession of 1974-1975 reached those depths. To find a bigger drop in employment numbers, you have to look back to the days following WWII, when the army demobilized, and took the factory production jobs with it. That recession there, which took over 12 points off the GDP is not considered to be particularly bad because the economy wasn’t adversely impacted by it, so when making the comparison, the only numbers that show worse job losses are those from the Great Depression.

There, I said it!

But it’s a fact, so I might as well say it to our readers here: that Obama came into office with raging recession (itself the worst since the Great Depression) incipient deflation (several months would see negative growth in inflation) and a jobs market that was losing hundreds of thousands of jobs off the payroll when he got into office, more than at any time since we demobilized from WWII or climbed our way out of the Great Depression.

Those were the conditions he had to start with. What did you expect him to do, wave a magic wand and halt the recession and job losses right there? These kinds of crashes, especially deflationary ones, have a life of their own. These aren’t business cycles that lay down and die if you just let the economy alone.

This is yours:

Mr. Daugherty writes; “You would like the rest of our readers to simply assume that because The unemployment rate and numbers didn’t get as high under Bush as they’ve gotten over Obama, that somehow he’s at fault.

I would tell them, then, that to fairly place blame on Obama, we have to acknowledge that policies are what’s important here, not some coincidence of timing.”

Good Lord man…even given facts with which you agree your comments do nothing but apologize for bama. I could sum up your entire post with just two words…”Blame Bush”. November voters have a different mantra…

Blame OPR (obama, pelosi, reid).

See, I brought up the very unusually strong pace of job losses which we had coming out of the the final months of the Bush Administration, stating basically that the problem had a great deal of momentum behind it, which it wasn’t possible for Obama to halt, right then and there.

Bush had plenty of lead-time on these policy questions. He did nothing, or in the case of predatory lending, worse than nothing, by using an obscure federal law to pre-empt predatory lending investigations by State Attorneys General across the country.

I don’t blame Bush to satisfy some derangement. I blame Bush based on my knowledge of his policies.